[Dr Kain]

So I have completed the Chris Claremont run of X-Men stories in my Omnibus.

First off, the rest of the X-Factor story that dealt with Apocalypse was pretty good. Poor Nathan just could never catch a break at all. Well, it is nice to know how it goes on to become Cable now. The Dark Riders were not really all that impressive as villains though.

Next up, the Shadow King storyline, which I highly enjoyed for the most part. There were clearly things talked about in here that happened in the issues I can't get right now, but the main story made sense. Although, when did Xavier meet Legion? This seemed to be the first time the X-Men themslelves met him, and Charles was off with Lilandra for a while, so that left me a tad confused as to when there was even time for them to meet. I gotta be honest though, this whole thing felt like it could have been the series finale. Everything just feels so complete with the X-Men all back together, Lilandra is back in charge of the Shi'ar Empire, etc. It just seems like if someone really wanted to stop reading the series, that would be the perfect place to do it.

Anyway, X-Men 1-3 were... not what I remembered. First off, the whole thing of Magneto's genes being played with was just down right stupid, stupid STUPID!! I don't care if they kind of retconned it in issue 3, it was a dumb idea to begin with. Also, where did Guido and Jubilee just disappear to? Did they stay on Muir Island? Did Claremont just forget about them (Not that I mind not having Jubilee there)? The artwork in some areas looked beautiful, but then in others it was kind of distracting and hard to tell what was going on. It also seemed to lack some of the exposition that would have been needed to explain what the panel is displaying. Then you have the overly complicated uniform Nick Fury is suddenly wearing. Also, the ending to issue 2 felt very rushed since the X-Men just change sides at the drop of a hat without there being an explanation until the next issue. It made those last two pages very hard to read and follow. Oh, and I really wish they had the letter pages in this book because it would have been interesting to read whatever they had to say about Claremont leaving the series as they had done in the past with Byrne and Cockrum. I mean, he wrote the series for 16 years, that was probably an entire page in itself.

Well, we'll see where things go from here if my love for the comics I grew up on is just because of nostalgia or if they really were terrible.